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HEAlthier Cities through Blue-Green Regenerative Technologies: the HEART Approach

Project description

DEENESFRITPL

Designing a natural regeneration for today’s cities

Once perceived as too costly to maintain, nature in our cities has become a vital asset. From climate friendly and resource efficient buildings to parks and trees, the benefits range from increased property values to improved health. In this context, the EU-funded HEART project will develop an integrated approach to improve urban health and reduce health disparities. Specifically, it will design an innovative urban planning methodology that embraces and promotes policymaking for proper blue-green technologies with techniques aimed at changing individual behaviours. The project will test interventions on public health and well-being in three European cities: Belgrade, Aarhus and Athens. The findings will assist in urban regeneration designs and urban resilience planning.

Objective

HEART’s integrated approach aims to significantly improve urban health and reduce health disparities through an innovative urban planning methodology that embraces and promotes the policy making of proper Blue-Green (BG)-based technologies with techniques for changing individual -citizens’- behaviour. HEART mainly targets to: (i) monitor and efficiently assess the impact of specific BG-based interventions on Public Health (PH) and Well-Being (WB) through studies to be carried out at both clinical and non-clinical settings, in three European cities, i.e. Belgrade (Serbia), Aarhus (Denmark) and Athens (Greece). This way HEART aims to create evidence-based policy making recommendations that will be addressed to the relevant health authorities of these countries (based on specific KPIs), (ii) change individual -citizens’- health related behaviour, by using emerging ICT-based techniques, (iii) develop robust plans for regenerating and rehabilitating urban ecosystems to improve PH and WB, while in parallel addressing key challenges such as low environmental quality and low biodiversity, resilience to Climate Change and extreme weather conditions, air pollution, undervalued use of space in deprived and residual-values areas leading to health inequalities; (iv) create inclusive and accessible urban environments by systematically implementing gender mainstreaming strategies and new participatory tools (ICT-based) in order to ensure that diverse groups’ needs are properly considered and embedded into urban-regeneration-planning; (v) design urban regenerating plans targeting to deliver cities-for-people: the proposed BG solutions will improve citizens’ quality of life, based on real evidence and co-design processes, as well as stimulating and supporting social inclusivity for all; and (vi) improve urban resilience (operational, social and economic) through interventions designed using a set of urban planning matrices based on stakeholders’ participation. ΗEART is part of the European Urban Health cluster.

Fields of science

Programme(s)

Topic(s)

Call for proposal

H2020-SC1-BHC-2018-2020

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Sub call

H2020-SC1-2020-Two-Stage-RTD

Funding Scheme

RIA - Research and Innovation action

Coordinator

ETHNICON METSOVION POLYTECHNION
Net EU contribution
€ 450 937,50
Address
Heroon polytechniou 9 zographou campus
157 80 Athina
Greece

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Region
Αττική Aττική Κεντρικός Τομέας Αθηνών
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Other funding
€ 0,00

Participants (20)

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EC signature date 2 February 2021
Last update: 29 April 2022

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Permalink: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/945105

European Union, 2023